Genius Loci
by Bovineorbitor1
Summary: The slow passage of time in an unsanctified city. Gordon and Bruce.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: DODS

AN: Start of a drabble series. Am going to be very busy for the next month, so I thought I'd write a story in managable chunks, as well as improve my sad attempts at composing drabbles. Updates should therefore be very frequent. Feel a bit awkward uploading anything this short, so here's three at once.

1

It was a six o'clock, didn't-go-home–the–night-before whim which pulled him into the 24 hour cafe and sat him down in one of the stylish, uncomfortable chairs. He regretted it almost instantly. The environment was breezy and cheerful, too much so for this time and this city, but then the decor was clearly aiming at fashionable over organic anyway. He fiddled with his wedding ring as he glanced around. The only notable was the man in the grotty orange hoody sitting a few tables over, looking almost as out of place as Gordon was, who waved.


	2. Chapter 2

The smell of coffee eventually resuscitated Gordon's motives for coming in and he mumbled his order to the waitress, who mumbled something back about Nice Day Isn't It, and Thank You Sir. He tried for eye contact and missed. As soon as she flitted away he dropped his head and his eyelids and all of the thoughts which were willing to fall. Going home meant Thinking Of Other Things. Not going home opened the door to more ambiguous states. The man at the other table watched him incuriously from under his hood, apparently for lack of better decoration.


	3. Chapter 3

Gordon hunched his shoulders. He felt exposed under the stark and flickering electrics, and embarrassed with nerves. Leftover paranoia for breakfast in the morning. But the man just nodded, with the instinctive courtesy of a well trained child, and the exhaustion in the gesture squashed the first stirrings of Gordon's alarm. He went back to examining the coffee rings on the table until the waitress bobbed past under a tray, clattering. He looked up to see her deliver his silent companion's coffee. A lingering moment of reverence, then Bruce Wayne pushed back his hood and took a sip.


	4. elementary

He must have spoken. The misplaced doppelganger offered him a lazy smile in compensation.

"Bruce Wayne?" the man echoed. "But there's no conceivable reason why Bruce Wayne would be in this part of town at six in the morning, Commissioner. You'll just have to eliminate the impossible, and conclude that I am his long lost twin brother." He concluded the speech by steepling his fingers and giving his grin more energy. It ought to have made him look like a politician.

It didn't, and Gordon found himself prepared to play along."That sounds improbable."

"_Doesn't_ it?"


	5. Interrogate

"You look tired." Wayne's long lost twin could change conversational tacks with whiplash speed. He shrugged a little uncomfortably.

"It's early."

"Mm." Scruffy edition billionaire raised an aristocratic eyebrow at this evasion, far more in command of his own faculties now than he'd ever seemed in a suit. Maybe the coffee here was really that good.

"Not going home?"The questionable Wayne peered at him around his mug, his probing light enough for Gordon's second shrug to be an effective countermeasure. "Ah. Well, in that case, perhaps as a grateful citizen I could buy you breakfast?"


	6. surrender

There was instinctive resistance, of course, because he'd wanted to sit in the empty, ungotham-like simulation of peace promised here, not be force-fed breakfast by an oddly knowing Bruce Wayne.

"It's barely six."

"And you barely ate yesterday, right? Come on, Commissioner. You serve the city," Wayne's eye fixed briefly on Gordon's fingers and their nervous habit, "I'm sure you sacrifice for it. Regular meals, for instance."

Gordon winced and Wayne just leaned back and watched him, the silence of his understanding as implacable as it was incongruous.

A rumble from Gordon's stomach announced the majority verdict with obnoxious clarity.


	7. companion

The day is cooling as it comes into its own.

A wind picked up around seven and went to work tugging yesterday's abandoned newspapers off the tables outside the cafe; a montage of city scattered in black and white amongst the pigeons. Gordon watched, momentarily distracted from the conversation he'd been having with not-Bruce Wayne which had, by some bizarre flux in the time continuum, lasted for an hour without becoming a chore. Surrealism might be the mitigating factor. Also breakfast.

Bruce watched too, face grave, and for just a moment Gordon forgot why he went there to be alone.


	8. lonely

Of course the moment of half alleviated loneliness won't last but, in hope of prolonging the alleviation, he throws out an arm to encompass the universe and asks "what do you think about all this?" with real curiosity. Life is reassuming its customary place on the street and it feels like all his moments are running out, faster, faster, but Wayne takes his time in answering.

(Outside, the world is rediscovering its realities: no one in this city tells the truth during daytime.)

Bruce smiles and pushes his chair back. "I'll tell you later."

The door rattles shut after him.


	9. transit

And of course the moment, like most other moments, was swallowed in the process story. Gordon went back to work and woke up at noon with his head on his desk and a sour taste in his mouth, a memory of agreeable confusion cohabitating with the buzzing between his temples like the hangover of a dream. By the time he'd worked through half a stack of forms, he'd almost concluded that the encounter had been imaginary. The sour taste lingered on all day.

So it wasn't until he finally got home and saw the invite that he began to wonder.

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AN: Sorry for boring set up chapter. That seems to be the main problem with a linear drabble series. Still, I am quite enjoying being able to update several times a week.


	10. ironies

"Gordon."

The party's host materialised out of an alienating mass of people and smiled, with a gratitude that rearranged features featured constantly in tabloids into the more familiar face he'd seen once in a twilight confusion of roles.

"Mr Wayne?" Gordon asked, and, daringly familiar- "Or the twin?"

"Hmm? Well, it's generally hard to tell." Bruce waved absent-mindedly to a simpering young woman across the room and offered Jim his significant, downgraded smile. "But I'm sure Commissioner Gordon can be trusted to keep a secret."

Gordon had to laugh at that, throat constricting around the sound.

_You have no idea._


	11. deflate

Out loud he said, "I've kept one or two, in my time," with a self effacing gesture, and if Bruce recognised the bitter disparity between that understatement and the truth, it didn't stop him laughing.

His laugh had a strange effect on the crowd – it shifted closer apparently on instinct, deflating the private bubble that enclosed the playboy and the commissioner. And of course Garcia gravitated towards the sound of moneyed goodwill on all social occasions, though this time he manifested himself rather hesitantly and looked at Gordon first.

"Commissioner," he said. "I was sorry to hear about the divorce."

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AN: I must have read too much Gordon fanfic, which tends to characterise Garcia as a political and social opportunist instantly all over any potential donors. Poor Garcia.


	12. contact

Gordon, faced with inevitability, just nodded. He held Garcia's gaze for as long as it was offered, and only when the Mayor turned away did he expel the breath that had clawed through his lungs and wreaked chaos. It floated to its termination like a sigh.

Later, as the polite conversation was petering out, he found Wayne at his elbow again.

"I'm sorry, too," the man said, staring into nothing. "I shouldn't have asked you to come."

"Why did you?" Gordon asked absently, watching a couple wobble through steps on the dance floor.

"I wasn't certain of your breakfast schedule."

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AN: Back again. To anyone following my other Batman stories, most won't be updated for a while because I am an idiot and left all my files at home when I went to University. That said, this is my first chapter posted from Uni, and I am proud. I have two pieces of coursework, a short story and many things that have to be read all by next week, and I am continuing in the fine tradition of writing fanfiction instead.


	13. fledgling

Later that night, with the cold of his sheets nibbling at his toes and the bed stretching out on either side, as though he'd shrugged himself into suspension; he could not sleep. He lay still and stared at the oracle ceiling as it spiralled through plaster and water stains. The quiet attended reproachfully to his clock, eddying heavier and heavier on a countdown.

Shortly before six, Gordon rolled off his mattress and slipped out into hope, heavy coat on his shoulders and nerves ticking for no adequate reason.

Bruce had already ordered him coffee when he arrived at the cafe.


	14. still waters

Neither of them asked any questions:

'how are you' or ' how did you know'; 'what is this, exactly,' would have been a good one. 'do you know when and why the world tripped over its own feet.'

But Gordon just sat down, Bruce said good morning and then one of them wondered about the traffic the cafe must get to be open so early; what the secret was which kept people moving in and out around them.

"Possibly just very good coffee," Gordon suggested. Bruce inspected the answer without criticism - shrugged confirmation. It was good enough for now.


	15. service

"Don't put your feet on the table," Gordon said, giving them a disciplinary shove. Bruce raised an eyebrow at him over the sheaf of newspaper he was holding, but neither removed his feet nor stopped reading. The pages were slightly damp from being left on an outside table all night and there were smudges of ink fingerprinted in the margins.

"Do you do PSAs too, Commissioner?" he asked, very serious over reports of deteriorating social conditions and girl guides capturing a mortified mugger (badges pending). "The moustache is imposing."

Gordon snorted into his apparently authoritarian facial hair and lightened up.


	16. icebreaker

"Will you follow the trial?" Gordon asked, when the peacefulness felt too settled, too necessary, and the hour was almost up. Everyone talked about it, everyone: in the station, on the street. Everyone had some investment.

Gordon hadn't talked about it.

Bruce didn't look at him during the question. He was folding up one corner of his paper, not purposeful enough for origami but still seemingly requiring all his attention. Gordon couldn't see his eyes when he murmured: "Joker."

"Him, yes," Jim said, almost on a laugh.

The billionaire curled his casually scattered limbs in, became contained.

"Yes," he said.

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AN: So I have just finished being bogged down with essays. These are celebration of getting a chance to write again.

Writing this fic is very relaxing: reading it might be almost soporific. Sleeptalk from reviewers would be very much appreciated!


	17. vacancies

"We don't have to talk about it," Gordon said, and suddenly found it to be true. The look on Bruce's face, the look that never met his gaze when he met it in the mirror, was company enough. Bruce folded his hands.

"Okay."

The hands of his watch were curving back towards the station.

"I'd better go," he said, standing up.

"Alright." Bruce had gone distant, not with any deliberate degree of coldness but frozen nonetheless; faraway.

He left the other man sitting there sipping coffee and picking at his muffin irritably. Presumably the billionaire had nowhere else to be.


	18. clues

"So we can avoid politics and the weather," Bruce said as soon as Gordon poked his head around the door.

The Commissioner entered slowly, taking in the chess board sitting on the table.

"Would've taken you as more of a 'Clue' man, I think," he said.

"Why's that?" The billionaire rested his chin on his fist and looked inscrutable, but also amused.

"More exciting, I suppose," he said a little uncertainly.

"Oh, Polo provides all the excitement I need," Bruce said, waving a hand. "Come on."

Gordon sat, frowned, and turned the board to take the black pieces for himself.


	19. faces

"Are you alright?"

"Well, I think I'm losing." Click. "Badly."

"I disagree."

"Are you working a metaphor on me?"

"Absolutely not." _Click. _

"Damnit." Click. "Babs is fond of this game. She can beat me in about five minutes too."

"Smart girl."

"She is. Her teachers think so, anyway. She'd want to meet you if she knew about this."

"You've never mentioned it?"

"I'm not sure I've got the words to put with it, if I'm honest."

Bruce twirled a piece about its square absently, some complicated thought networking with its many fellows behind the bland facade.

"Tête-à-tête?" he suggested, brightly.


	20. end

Gordon leaned in to inspect the ranks, and saw inevitability staring back at him. It remained in sight as he shifted his gaze to the calmly smug face of his friend.

Bruce Wayne reached over and took his knight, smiling.

James Gordon started to laugh.

"Of course," he said.


End file.
